Search results for 'tag:Simple past tag:Universities' matching tags 'Simple past' and 'Universities'

Present perfect/simple past in since clause

Viceidol — Thu, 24 Jul 2008 15:17:59 GMT

Hello, everyone:

I've asked a question in http://www.englishforums.com/English/QuestionAboutTenseUsageSinceClause/gwxpb/post.htm , but I find out there are more than I need to ask, so I think it would be better to write a new post.

Recently I saw several sentences using simple past and present perefect in their since clauses. They are really confusing to me. I really hope you could help me comfirm their meaning. It may be very easy for you, but I've been wondering what their real meanings are for many days and couldn't find a clue. Please take a look at the following sentences:

1. It's a long time since he has lived there.

2. It's a long time since he lived there.

3. It is already 6 years since he have lived in New York.

4. It is already 6 years since he lived in New York.

I think those four sentences suggest "He doesn't live here/in New York now.", right? If my understanding is true, then please see the next pairs of sentences:

5. She has written to me frequently since I have been ill. (Does it suggest "I am still ill now"? If not, what does it suggest?)

6. She has written to me frequently since I was ill. (Does it suggest "I am not ill now."? If not, what does it suggest?)

If my understandings about sentence 5, 6 are right, then I think that's very tricky. Because sentence 1 and 3, which also use "have done" in their since clauses, suggest the same as sentence 2 and 4, which use simple past in their since clauses. However, although sentence 5 also uses "have done" in its since clause like sentence 1 and 3 do, sentence 5 does not suggest the same thing as sentence 6 does. Why is that? Is it because sentence 1, 2, 3, 4 use "It is + a period of time" structure? If so, I would be very amazed that simply a minor change like this would completely change the meaning of "have done" in the since clause. What do you think?

Here are some similar pairs of sentences:

7. Since she has been at Beijing University, it has gone through great changes. (I think it suggests "She is still at Beijing University now", am I right? If not, what does it suggest?)

8. Since she was at Beijing University, it has gone through great changes. (I think it suggests "She is not at Beijing University now", am I right? If not, what does it suggest?)

9. It's already 5 years since he has been in the army.

10. It's already 5 years since he was in the army.

I think sentence 9 and 10 both suggest "He is not in the army now", am I right? (Because "It is + a period of time" structure is used in the main clauses.) If not, what does it suggest?

11. They have been happy since they have lived in London. (I think it suggests "They still lives in London now", am I right? If not, what does it suggest?)

12. They have been happy since they lived in London. (I think it suggests "They don't live in London now", am I right? If not, what does it suggest?)

13. It's a long time since they have lived in London.

14. It's a long time since they lived in London.

I think sentence 13 and 14 both suggest "They don't live in London now", am I right? (Because "It is + a period of time" structure is used in the main clauses.) If not, what does it suggest?

I know those questions might be a piece of cake for native speakers, but they're totally confusing to me. I've searched all my grammar books for the answer but couldn't find one. I would appreciate it if you could help me solve my doubt. Thank you for reading this post!!

Re: Help with Cover Letter Letter pls

Mister Micawber — Sun, 13 Apr 2008 10:17:40 GMT

.
I have underlined some problem areas. One point-- usually, you should use simple past tense where you have used present perfect:

Motivation Letter:

The Graduate programme in Finance at Hampton College is according my target to develop my skills on the financial field for a knowledge improvement and a career progression on the financial industry. Regarding the excellent reputation of Hampton College in specific, the Department of Economics, and its international recognized researches, I have chosen Hampton to study. Furthermore, I also plan to do the Master in Finance at Hampton, after finishing the graduate finance program.

I have a work experience in La Caja, one of the biggest spanishes bank in assets, working in an external commission auditing loans contracts and reporting directly for the Spanish Central Bank and the National Treasury. After that, I have finished my degree and I came to London to improve my English skills when I have started to work in a International Company of Fundsâ Transfers, liasing with more than 240 banks around the world, processing and confirming multi FX settlements, treasury, daily reconcialitions and cheque risk administrations. Starting as sales executive and finishing as a manager in the central branch of the company.

Aside my working experience, I also have knowledge in stock market, being a keen awareness of world events, current affair and financial markets. My interest in those subjects have started after I made a course~~, during my degree,~~ in financial markets and technical chart analysis, and I have started to invest on the Madrid Stock Exchange using an online stockbroker platform.

I have studied the elementary and high school in a top school in Madrid, Montfort School, which allowed me to enter in a top 5 university in Madrid, Universidad Complutense de Madrid. Where I have studied Business Administration, what the equivalent in UK would be a Bachelor Hons Degree in Science in Business Administration. Which includes, statistics, finance, accounting, marketing, economics, administration, human resource and strategy planning.

Thus, I am very motivated in improve my mathematical skills and my technical knowledge in finance with Hampton College.

Your sincerely,

Anderson

Re: inclusion vs. separation (present perfect and simple past)

Ant_222 — Sat, 17 Nov 2007 19:51:41 GMT

Hello, Hoa Thai.

Although Goodman outstripped me and deserved the brave one's laurels, I'd like to add some of the comments which I had started typing yesterday in the university, but hadn't time to finish...

Your reasonong is interesting but not fault-less.

«As CalifJim clearly explains in one of his writings, simple past represents time specificity; while present perfect serves time non-specificity (i.e., sometime in the past, including the recent time frame). Obviously, âspecificâ and ânon-specificâ cannot be the same.»

There's more to these tenses than this specifity/non-specifity dichotomy. I really prefer to do use actuality (connection of the action, or of a result there of, to the present) as the main (but not the only) difference.

This famous rule requireing Past Simple when a time is declared follows from it, because declaration of time indicates the speaker's focus on time rather than result.

«However, in terms of time, a ânon-specific time setâ does (Ant: I'd say "may include") include a âspecific time elementâ»

Don't get you.
1. In 1999 (is it specific?)
2. Since last month (specific?)
Which includes which?

«In addition to that, we all know a ânon-specific recent pastâ does not include a âspecific far pastâ â distinctively, the former is younger than the later.»

Is the word "far" so important?

1. We have been friends since 1995
2. I found it two minutes ago.

«In comparing to âthe lastâ - âthe bestâ or âthe worstâ is quality-based and time-unbiased â none or more are before it and none or more are after it;»

But only the word "last" deals with time. Is that an important difference?

«However, the superlative âtheâ does indicate a uniqueness, so when it happens, the time involved is specific!»

Yes!

I had started commenting this paragraph but suddenly found that your following paragraph tells the same:

«âWhat was the best movie you have ever seen?â means âAmong all movies you have seen, which one was the best?â - and that must be logical and natural since âall movies you have seenâ covers the time you saw the first one to the time you saw the last one (time non-specific) and âthe bestâ associates with one point in time (time specific). Time inclusion is in play.»

Fully agree, but asking "which one is the best" is also OK, and then it's not an inclusion...

«Can we interpret âWhat was the last movie you have seen?â to mean âAmong all movies you have seen, which one was the last?â»

From the standpoint of formal logic, yes. I don't completely understand Goodman's opinion that "among" may allow for several alternatives. There can be only one last movie (unless one's watching several movies simultaneously...)

If not, would âWhat was the last movie you have ever seen?â (âeverâ is added) allow us to carry out the similar interpretation?»

Well, as Goodman already said, "ever" doesn't work here. But it would work with "the best", "the most scary", e.t.c. Again, I don't understand Goodman's comment: «"Last" is an adjective, but not a comparative adjective» â they all are superlative adjectives, aren't they?

âWhat was the last movie you have seen?â

Using your logic, it does seem correct, but somehow I can't accept it. The very structure of this sentence with Past Simple in the main clause somehow forces a conflict with the Present Present in the subordinate clause.

The "was" in the main clause imposes a past time frame onto everything subordinated to it.

-----------------------------------------------------------

«As you might have noticed, even a reputable site like BBCâs teaching English, which I cited earlier in our previous thread, posed the question in a different way: âThink of a film you have seen recently, what was it called?â»

It's a pretty good sentence. They probably want the reader to focus on his/her impressions of the movie and they use Past Simple to help him/her "travel" back in time! It's neither bad nor an exception. I'll even say it's a nice example of your term "inclusion".

I wound't like "... what is it called" at all in this case!

Re: simple past vs present perfect

CalifJim — Tue, 13 Nov 2007 21:28:18 GMT

... ~~her~~ his help.

<<Are the books we ordered/have ordered used by any other university here?

Simple past or present perfect or both with different meanings?

It seems to me that discourse grammar forces the use of "have ordered" because the question is in the present and the following phrase "we have ordered" that describes the books should be in the present too. No, not necessarily; the verb order is in a subordinate clause describing the books. The use of the books by other universities can be a present state of affairs even though the books were ordered years ago.

Compare: The people we met last week are now waiting in the lobby of the hotel. >>

To my ear the present perfect is actually somewhat anomalous here (though not entirely wrong). If "we" ordered the books, we know when we ordered them. The ordering took place at a specific and known time. These factors argue for the use of the simple past. There would be nothing inconsistent in the meaning if we added a time reference, thus: Are the books we ordered last [week / month / year] used by any other university here? There is no question here -- no doubt -- about the fact of the ordering of the books.

But if there were some doubt about whether the books had been ordered, the present perfect, which is indefinite about time, might be more appropriate: Have you ordered the books yet? Yes, and the books we have ordered will be delivered to us by the end of the week. The underlined portions remain indefinite about the time of the ordering because the main point here is to find out (or to confirm, in the answer) that the event has taken place, not when.

CJ

Re: simple past vs present perfect

Magic79 — Tue, 13 Nov 2007 13:27:22 GMT

Cali has always given lucid explanations and I am very indebted to her help.

I have a question here not so much about sentence level but about discourse level.

First, look at this sentence:

Are the books we ordered/have ordered used by any other university here?

Simple past or present perfect or both with different meanings?

I asked an American teacher and he chose the simple past "we ordered."

It also seems to me as if both tenses work here. Any explanation?

Re: present simple after adjective

Yankee — Wed, 27 Jun 2007 02:13:58 GMT

Hi Musesun

"This forbidden to make money in the university" is not a correct sentence. The word "forbidden" is not a tense at all -- it is just the past participle (V3) of the verb 'forbid'. You can say "This is forbidden", but you cannot say "This forbidden".

Have you learned how to make passive sentences yet? That seems to be what is confusing you.
The following pairs of sentences have the same meanings. The second sentence in each pair is the passive form of the first sentence:

Cowboys ride horses. = simple present tense, active voice
Horses are ridden by cowboys. = simple present tense, passive voice

He wrote that book. = simple past tense, active voice
That book was written by him. = simple past tense, passive voice

In addition to what I've written above, the past participle can also be used as an adjective. For example:
That is a forbidden activity. = That activity is forbidden.

Sometimes it is difficult to decide whether a past participle has been used as an adjective or is part of a passive verb construction.

Re: Haven't / Didn't

Tam Sadek — Thu, 17 May 2007 23:52:31 GMT

Yankee wrote:
Hi Pucca

And, as Marius also mentioned, we Americans tend to use the simple past tense somewhat more often than our British cousins do.

Who says? Don't confuse EFLese with English. They are two completely different things.

Most EFL writers, Michael Swann included, ridiculously compare formal written UK English with informal US spoken English. I'm pretty sure that you'd find that US Academic English uses as much Present Perfect as UK Academic English does; unless of course you're telling me that US Universities prefer the Past Simple as well?

To me either the Past Simple or Present Perfect are perfectly acceptable and it's got nothing to do with when they happened; rather it's to do with whether it's of any relevance now - or not?

Beware simplistic EFL grammar mcnuggets that ignore register and/or context.

Re: subjunctive or past conditional

Goodman — Mon, 07 May 2007 23:03:25 GMT

Hi Bokeh,

Becasue of your reply, it made me take a second look at the original question. I also did some research and found this paper written on the subject of Semantic Composition of Subjunctive Conditionals by Michela Ippolito of MIT/TÃ¼bingen University. I am not completely sure if I understood all thwt he wrote, but I do agree whole-heartedly with his view from what I understood. It's obvious that there are several subjunctive moods and conditionals discussed in great legnth which was exactly the reason causing the confusions on this thread. I find it absoulutely useful so I've extracted a small portion which I beleive was related the posted question.

http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=type+of+subjunctive

michela@alum.mit.edu

3. The Semantic Analysis of Subjunctive Conditionals

In answering the question of what the correct semantic analysis of subjunctive

conditionals is we will raise and answer the following questions too: (1) What is the

difference between indicative an subjunctive conditionals? (2) What is the role of the

past morphology in the composition of the meaning of a subjunctive conditional? (3)

What is the contribution of the second layer of past to the meaning of subjunctive

conditionals? As Iatridou observes, the past morphology in subjunctive conditionals is

not interpreted temporally, as the event of playing baseball in example (2) is supposed

to take place in the future (tomorrow). What follows in this paper is inspired by her

work and by the intuition behind it, i.e. that the temporal morphology we see in modal

constructions actively contributes to the construction of the modal meaning. However,

I depart from her idea that tense morphology has a âcore meaningâ that can apply to

different kinds of entities (i.e. her idea that if it applies to times, it is interpreted

temporally; if it applies to worlds, then it is interpreted modally). My claim is that

tense (aspectual) morphology has a single, definite interpretation: the temporal

(aspectual) one. The way tense morphology contributes to the composition of modal

meaning is by being interpreted in different positions in the structure of a modal

sentence, i.e. either in the restriction or in the nuclear scope of the modal operator.

Recall that I am arguing that accessibility relations are of type <s<i<st>> (where i is

the type for times and s the type for worlds): the notion of accessible world is relative

not only to a world but also to a time so that a world will be accessible if it satisfies

certain conditions with respect to an evaluation world and an evaluation time. The

past that we see in subjunctive conditionals such as If Charlie played baseball

tomorrow, we would lose the game is the morphological realization of a perfect

operator interpreted in the modal domain. I will develop an analysis of the meaning of

subjunctive conditionals and show how it solves the puzzle of the presupposition

projection for subjunctive conditionals discussed in Heim 1992; finally, I will answer

the three questions I raised above.

3.1 Felicity Conditions for Conditionals

Recall what the puzzle was. The antecedent of a subjunctive conditional can be

inconsistent with the common ground, and consequently, the set of worlds the modal

operator quantifies over cannot be restricted to the worlds in the context set (the

epistemically accessible worlds) (see (19) below). Furthermore, this set cannot be the

empty context (W) either because, if it were, we would expect conditionals with

antecedents with presuppositions to be infelicitous since the modal base does not have

the right entailments. However, this is incorrect: subjunctive conditionals whose

antecedents have presuppositions are felicitous, which means that the antecedentâs

presuppositions can be entailed by the modal base (cf. (20)). In fact, they must (cf.

(21)).

(19) Jack is dead. If he were alive, he would come to the ceremony.

(20) Jack smokes. If he quit smoking tomorrow, which he wonât, he would run

the marathon.

(21) Jack quit smoking last year. If he quit smoking tomorrow, he would run

the marathon.

Heim 1992 concluded that the only way to reconcile these two requirements of

subjunctive conditionals is to stipulate that the modal base is neither the set of

epistemically accessible worlds (the main context) nor the totally empty modal base

W, but the (largest) set of worlds obtained by suspending all the speakerâs

assumptions except the presuppositions of the antecedent, which then remain entailed.

However, I showed above that this stipulation does not work for all subjunctive

conditionals: in particular, it does not account for the difference between one-past

subjunctive conditionals and mismatched two-pasts subjunctive conditionals, as

shown below.

(22) Jack died last year.

a. #If he came to the ceremony tomorrow, he would be proud of Sally.

b. If he had come to the graduation tomorrow, he would have been proud

of Sally.

We are back where we were: how is the set of worlds to which modal operators apply

selected? Clearly, the felicity conditions for indicative, one-past and two-pasts

subjunctive conditionals are all different. But what is the difference and how is the

difference determined?

It seems correct to hold that for a sentence to be felicitously uttered in the

context c, c must entail the presuppositions of . In the common ground theory of

presuppositions developed by Stalnaker (1973, 1974, 1975), the common ground is

the set of all the propositions known or assumed to be true by all the participants in

the conversation, and the context set is the set of worlds where all the propositions in

the common ground are true. Assertions are meant to update the common ground. If

the assertion is made and accepted, the common ground expands and the context set

shrinks. Thus, if a sentence presupposes p, then asserting requires that the

common ground entail p, i.e. it requires that the speaker assume that it is true in the

common ground that p, modulo accommodation.10 It is explicit in Heimâs context

change semantics (and implicit in Stalnakerâs idea of a derived context) that a clause

(that is to say, the structural description of a clause at the level of Logical Form) is not

always evaluated with respect to the context of utterance: the context with respect to

which a structure is evaluated depends on the level of embedding of the clause, the

most unembedded clause being interpreted with respect to the main (utterance)

context. We can then reformulate the principle above: what is responsible for the

felicity of a sentence is not whether its presuppositions are entailed by the utterance

context but whether they are entailed by the evaluation context (which may be

identical to the utterance time in some cases). Call this principle PREP.

10 Stalnaker (1972, 1973, 1974, 1978, 1988, 1998). Kartunnen (1974), Lewis (1979), Heim (1982,

1983, 1992), Thomason (1990) and von Fintel (2000) also contributed important work in the tradition

of the common ground theory of presuppositions.

3.2 What Looks Like Past is Perfect

I propose that the past morphology we see in subjunctive conditionals in English is

the morphological realization of a perfect operator. The English perfect, and

especially the present perfect, has raised a lot of interest in the linguistic literature

because of the properties that distinguish it from both the present and the simple past

tense. McCoard (1978) offers a survey of possible theories of the perfect: the current

relevance theory, the indefinite past theory, the embedded past theory and, finally, the

theory that he argues to be the best, the Extended Now theory. Very briefly, according

11 The claim that the presuppositions of the antecedent of a conditional have to be entailed by the

context is a standard claim of a dynamic approach to meaning (Heim 1992). However, we will see later

that the issue is more intricate and I will have more to say on this topic later on in the paper.

Re: It's time+simple past tense

Marius Hancu — Fri, 08 Sep 2006 14:00:48 GMT

Calive wrote:
This is the headline from the brochure of a leading car maker:

Isn't it time you shift to a smarter drive?

In my opinion, the correct sentence would be:

Isn't it time you shifted to a smarter drive?

OK, I've consulted several very educated native speakers, just to eliminate my subjectivity.

The majority consent is that shifted is the correct one (as the quotation from the university site indicated). I would, as a result, use it in this context.

While some accept both, some are adamant that shift is incorrect, and I respect the prescriptivists. Others are saying that "it could be okay if it's taken to have an imperative tone rather than being a mere recommendation. "

Re: It's time+simple past tense

Marius Hancu — Fri, 08 Sep 2006 12:05:33 GMT

It is time you shift
uses the subjunctive shift, as with require/demand verbs:
It is required that you shift
which has the (mainly) BrE equivalent of
It is required that you should shift
(see Swan, Practical English Usage, Subjunctive, Should)

I think your version could be also valid, but suggesting less of a mandatory/presssing requirement and more of a doubt.

Both versions are used at Google, with yours being more frequent (and present on a university site here):

-----
Perhaps it's time you shift your focus off of yourself and
this incident which most rescuers/volunteers encounter and onto the
greater good of a difficult cause.

http://www.planetfeedback.com/index.php?level2=blog_viewpost&topic_id=285690
-----
-------
If you love what you do, if your business lights you up, you wish you
could attract more clients--but you're confused about marketing and
you just hate to sell, then it's time you shifted the way you think
about getting clients...

http://www.uh.edu/academics/dce/gen/conf.html
--------